Eye of the Beholder

The character in Walt Whitman’s Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking and the modern emo-art phase David Sedaris have in common an event that is footnoted with the reference point: “This is when the universe switched polarity for [insert either the transcendentalist or the misunderstood meth-head artist].” Whitman ascends from blissful ignorance to a translator of the natural world while Sedaris becomes increasingly reverent to the idea of the world happening without rhyme or reason. Aside from this incredibly ambiguous contrasting similarity, comparable to the pinpoint accuracy of the National Enquirer horoscope, the two have very little in common.

Out of the Cradle begins with a man walking on a beach with sand and memories between his toes late one night throws himself to the ground in the semi-neutral zone where the foam flicks its tongue at the edge of the world. The camera pans up to showcase a yellow half-moon and panning down we are of the same beach but the man is now a boy, barefoot and bareheaded, hiding in the shadowy corners of the earth listing to a distant song.

This young boy who had been observing a pair of Mockingbirds that had exchanged vows in Alabama, when one day the Bride never returned. The Widower’s lament could be heard in a somber tune in the salty night air for the rest of the summer, understood only by the innocent child. For he had spent enough time watching the two he had mastered their encrypted whistles and tweets. On one night when the eulogy-like song was being listened to by the boy when all of a sudden, like a floodgate with the hinges all disappearing, the life poured into the natural world, every lifeless object was now a character with a voice for the boy to hear.

I imagine this is similar to what it is like being God; constant bombardment from a plethora of voices in prayer, all unique enough to distinguish between yet blended together to create the beautiful frothy sound that is the substance of life. However, the prayers of nature are not looking to be answered by a higher power; they simply just want to be heard. When one approaches nature with a question, it replies in the same fashion as a Buddhist monk. The child begs the Ocean for “the word…superior to all,” and neither quickly nor slowly did the Ocean reply. But eventually it let the boy know the word higher than all words; “death, death, death, death” (Whitman, Cradle, pg. 77-78).

Now abreast to the Babel language of nature, the child reaches enlightenment. “Now in a moment…I am awake” (Whitman, Cradle, pg. 77), he states and the poet is born, ready to translate the song of the world for the rest of us.

David Sedaris has a sort of